“It’s a seasonal fruit plate. With mint.”
She arches her brows at me. “You built me a menu of everything I love, and then you built yourself a menu that your cardiologist would frame on his wall.” She props her chin on her hand and grins at me. “Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you, or are you trying to impress me?”
I lean forward, keeping my voice low. “Which one will help me get lucky later?”
She laughs, but I see the flirty gleam in her eyes. “You’re not going to need dinner on the beach or fancy menus for that.”
“Good to know.”
My arousal stirs at the feel of her bare foot sliding against my leg. I reach across the table for her hand, and she laces her fingers through mine. For a long moment we sit there like that, in the candlelight, holding hands across a table with a comfortable ease that a week ago I wouldn’t have imagined I’d ever find with anyone. Now, it’s hard to imagine sharing aromantic meal with a woman other than the extraordinary one seated across from me now. I feel like I’m exactly where I should be, and with it comes a startling sense of calm.
That’s new. That’s Ella.
The coconut shrimp arrives for her, the salad for me, and both are good. She steals a mango wedge off my plate without asking, because apparently what’s mine is hers now, and pops it into her mouth with zero guilt. I watch her lips close around the fruit. Her dress shifts when she leans forward and I lose a full three seconds to the view before I redirect to my own plate.
The entrees come and go. Her filet is good enough to make her close her eyes and moan on the first bite. My grilled mahi-mahi is fine. Healthy. Responsible.
Then the chocolate lava cake arrives.
Single plate. Two forks. The server sets it between us and the molten center has already started to breach the surface, dark and glossy, pooling against a scoop of vanilla that’s beginning to surrender. Ella stares at it like it insulted her mother and she’s about to forgive it anyway.
“You’re not going to make me eat this by myself are you?”
“I ordered it for you.”
“There are two forks.”
“The second one is decorative.”
Giving me a dry look, she picks up her fork and cuts into the cake. The center collapses outward in a slow, obscene flood of chocolate. She loads the fork and takes a bite and the sound she makes is the same sound she made in the suite that first night, the low hum that sent me to the bathroom to run cold water on my face. Except now I’m sitting across a candlelit table from her, and the sound goes through me like a current and settles low and stays there.
She catches me watching. “What?”
“Nothing. Eat your cake.”
“You’re looking at me like you want to say something.”
I’m looking at her like I want to lay her across this table and forget about the server twenty yards away. I shift in my chair, seeking a more comfortable angle now that my pants are getting tight around the groin. “I’m just enjoying the show.”
She grins. Loads the second fork with cake and holds it across the table. “Live dangerously, Alec.”
I think back to the similar note she left me on the mini fridge in our suite around the time our whole unwilling roommate situation began. A week ago, I refused this same offering from this same woman, and we both remember why. Not because I had any real disagreement with chocolate. Because taking something she was offering meant crossing a line I was still pretending existed.
That line is gone now. I lean forward and take the bite.
Rich. Dense. The kind of sweetness that has no business being this good, and the warm chocolate dissolves on my tongue while Ella watches my face with an intensity that has nothing to do with dessert. My cardiologist would definitely not approve, but he isn’t sitting across from Ella Manning in a sexy green dress with torchlight on her collarbones and a saucy dare in her eyes, so his opinion feels academic.
“Verdict?” she asks.
“The cake is acceptable.”
“Acceptable.” She laughs and loads another forkful for herself. “Your face is doing the standing ovation thing again. You’re busted.”
She’s right. I am busted. In more ways than she knows.
We finish the cake together, trading forks across the table, her feeding me bites I pretend to resist and accept immediately, the chocolate and the candlelight and the ease of sharing a plate blurring into something that feels like the most natural thing in the world. Her tongue catches a smear of chocolate at the cornerof her mouth, and I watch her lick it away, my train of thought derailing so completely it’s a miracle I stay seated across from her.
“I’m sorry about what happened earlier today,” I say, needing to get my mind off all the things I’d like to do with Ella and a plate of sticky chocolate sauce. The server has stepped away to get coffee for me, chamomile tea for her. “At the boutique, I mean. With that woman.”
